In a note to clients — as noted by MacRumors — Barclays analyst Blayne Curtis and his compadres say Apple’s AirPods (pictured) continue to grow in popularity, but HomePod sales have been disappointing.
Barclays forecasts that AirPods shipments will likely approach 30 million units in 2018, but HomePod sales have been “underwhelming” so far. The analysts say Apple planned an initial production run of 6-7 million units, but it’s unclear how many have sold.
Barclays also corroborates previous rumors that Apple will roll outa new iPhone X, a bigger “iPhone X Plus,” and a lower-priced 6.1-inch iPhone X-like smartphone with some design compromises such as an LCD instead of OLED display, 3GB of RAM instead of 4GB, a single-lens rear camera, and no 3D Touch.
The Sellers Research Group (that’s me) thinks that Apple has sold 4-5 million HomePods so far. After all, according to a NPD report, day one pre-orders of HomePod came in higher than all other smart speaker first-day pre-orders, except for the Amazon Echo Dot.
